10,000 kettlebell swings that will make you stronger

I swung a kettlebell ten thousand times during the course of a few weeks. It's awful, I wanted to quit, and here's why I'd do it again.

After having done more than three months of strength training with the Starting Strength program, I was ready to mix things up a bit. Because I had planned to run Tough Viking a month later I also wanted to improve my conditioning, while keeping the strength I'd worked so hard for.

There are so many training programs out there but I've always been curious about using kettlebells as my main strength equipment and so when I found The 10,000 Kettlebell Swings Challenge I was hooked.

Dan ran this himself, together with 18 other coaches and athletes and these were their results:

Everyone got leaner, dropping a waist size or two, in 20 workouts.

Every coach or athlete made visual muscular improvements in their physiques, adding lean body mass.

Every lifter increased his grip strength and greatly increased work capacity and athletic conditioning. They could all train longer and harder when they went back to their normal training programs.

After the program, every lifter saw a noted improvement in his core lifts. PR's fell like dominos. Full-body strength and power shot through the roof.

Abs were more visible. Glute strength was tremendously better. The abs and glutes "discovered" how to work again, leading to athletic improvements in sport and in the weight room.

Sounds pretty damn good to me! I'll share my own results further down.

NB! Your form will deteriorate when doing this many repetitions. Bad form increases the risk of injury and so if yours' not great to begin with, I wouldn't do this program just yet. Start practicing the kettlebell swing properly and make sure you can consistently perform it with good form.

Because the program's so simple and people always think they can make it better, a bunch of variations have popped up. Dan John is pretty clear what he thinks of this:

If you change it, fine, but then itâ€™s not the programâ€¦ I walked into the Sistine Chapel and saw Michelangelo on the scaffolds. I yelled up, "more blue". Thatâ€™s how I feel when I see people look at a program and immediately "make it better".

The base is 10, 15, 25, and 50 swings but Dan have tried this with 15, 35, 15, 35 as well as using heavier kettlebells for 10, 15, 10, 15, 10, 15, 10, 15 swings. I'd like to try the latter one some time.

Others have tried using a "breathing ladder", where you swing the kettlebell once, put it down and take one deep breath, swing it twice, two breaths, etc, etc. Do this up until ten and then back down to one again â€“ that's 100 swings.

The original program didn't prescribe any rest time. I found this weird, because rest can affect your finish time a lot and that's the main progression variable throughout this program.

I tried some different setups but found it best to rest 30 seconds after the 10 group, 60 seconds after the 15 group, 90 seconds after the 25 group, and 300 seconds between rounds.

In the beginning I couldn't do fifty swings in a row, without putting the kettlebell down to rest. So this was my initial focus. Once I could go unbroken through the rounds I started shortening the rest time and in the end these were my rounds:

It took me longer than planned to complete the 10,000 Kettlebell Swings Challenge. Normally you'll do it in four or five weeks, depending on whether you rest two days in a row or keep a rolling schedule with only ever one rest day. It took me seven weeks.

As you can see above I started out doing two days of only 200 swings. Coming from no conditioning at all for half a year, it felt like a wise choice. In hindsight I should have just kept grinding and not caring if the initial workouts took long.

Later I skipped two Thursdays and didn't do the full five hundred on the following Friday. I was feeling beat up. Again, I should have kept at it and ground it out.

The middle is me going on vacation, with no access to kettlebells.

While on vacation I put together some charts for my progress â€“ the one above â€“ and was surprised to see how much I sucked. I really didn't feel like I'd skipped out of that many workouts but the numbers told the story clearly.

When I came back home, motivated by this chart, I kept swinging until I hit 10,000.

I really enjoyed this program and saw some great benefits from it too!

Running the Tough Viking obstacle race was no problem, despite me not having run a single meter, nor done any cardio whatsoever, for half a year. I was quite surprise by how well and quickly this kettlebell challenge improved my conditioning.

My grip became stronger and my forearms grew too. While I haven't tried it yet, I know this will benefit my deadlift, pull-ups, and anything that requires a good, steady grip.

Further, I lost about three kilos of fat during this, without losing hardly any muscle. My diet was pretty good though and so it's hard to know which factors deserve attribution.

Not only your muscles adapts to stress, but your skin too. This was definitely noticeable, as my hands would easily rip in the beginning and now my palms are thick leather. My girlfriend doesn't get massages anymore â€“ she gets exfoliate treatments.

I learned the power of accountability and taking regular inventory. In the future I'll definitely do a weekly review of my planned training vs my actual training.

My technique improved manyfold. Because you're swinging a heavy weight when tired you'll be forced to find the optimal form, and I feel like I did. I now also know how to modify the swings on the fly if my forearms get tired, my glutes start tiring, quads are complaining, etc.

Finally, this challenge wasn't only physical but mental as well. I wanted to quit many times, kept coming up with excuses, but in the end I learned to stop second-guessing and just grind.

Don't grip with the middle of your hand, but put the kettlebell handle just below where the fingers connect to your hand and then grip it. You want to avoid having the weight fold that skin area as it'll inevitably drop closer to your fingers during the swings.

This will help a lot in avoiding ripped hands.

Don't bother with gloves â€“ you're not playing golf. If your hand rips though, I suggest getting some cheap sports tape and covering it up so you can continue swinging while it heals.

Ten thousand swings is a frightening number. Don't think about it â€“ break it down into five hundred per day, hundred per round, and ten per group. Then do one swing, and another, and another. Focus only on what's immediately in front of you and you'll be fine.

If you feel like giving up, at least finish the next group. Then maybe the next and so on.

One session is just like the other, so it can be hard not seeing any variation and mistaking that for lack of progress. I use spreadsheets to visualize getting closer to the end but if you're less of a nerd you could also draw twenty boxes on a paper and cross one out each time you complete a workout.

13 comments

Tobias, thanks for the very detailed write up. I have done the 10k Challenge 4 times now and this month I will be finishing it with the 106lbs bell. I average about 54 minutes for 550 swings a workout. This challenge separates the wheat from the chaff and doing it with a heavy bell like the 106 would make most kettle-bell aficionados quit. I do 10-15-10-15 for 50 and I do this 11 times to complete my work out. You should give it a go with the 106 its very challenging. Jonathan

Oh, wow! That's the 48 kg (3 pood) right? The beast. :) I've actually never even seen one in real life.

I'm currently focusing purely on strength, as my goal this year is to deadlift 200 kg for at least one rep. Once I hit that though, hopefully by summer, I think I might actually redo this challenge with your setup.

Did you find it hard to keep track of the rounds with the 10-15-10-15 reps approach?

Yep, it is the beast. I have worked up to this weight with years and thousands of swings. Currently Im 5'10 and just under 200 lbs so the beast is actually more than 50% of my weight. As far as tracking my reps I use two dry erase boards. The 1st board I use to visualize the challenge as a whole. Its a calendar that I have premarked with 550 swings and BR for break day. Then after I complete it I black out the day. It helps me stay focus and see the days falling away. The 2nd board I have is premarked with 11 levels and I write down the 10-15-10-15 as I complete them. So its very easy to track that way. The only difficulty I have is when you swing the 106 550 times I am sweating so much that I have to make sure I have enough towels in my workout area and a rag to cover the dry erase board ;)

I love the idea with the calendar! That what I use myself to keep me on track with long-running challenges (cutting for a competition, for example) â€“ when you have around 15 checks in a row you really don't want to break that chain. :)

I have complete 5250 swings in 10 workouts and 14 days. I have 4750 swings left and 10 workouts and 14 days to go. I'm keeping a good pace and I should finish on time and complete the challenge for my 5th time. The 106 lbs bell makes this attempt not only physically but mentally draining as well. My most recent workout was 550 swings in 59:27 seconds. I'm trying hard to keep my workout time as near an hour as possible. I know part of the 10k swing challenge is improvement in time from one workout to the next but the 106lbs bell is so heavy that I want to take my time and get rest between sets to ensure my form doesn't erode and that I concentrate on my hip hinge.

I have completed 9,500 swings with the 106lbs bell. Tonight is my last 500 swing workout and I will have completed the 10k swing challenge with the beast! It has been difficult mentally and physically. Im incredibly proud that I was able to finish this challenge! After tonight's workout I will have moved 1,060,000 lbs in 20 workouts!

Awesome, Evan! You have a cool experience ahead of you. :) It could just as well be bodyweight, kettlebell, or any other type exercises. Now I'd probably do presses, pull-ups, and squats, to complement the swings.

Hey ! Tobias brother i want to loose weight My Aim is to loose around 15- 20 kg in 4 months. Will this challenge help me in loosing that much weight ? Plus this challenge looks interesting. I started to workout when my weight was around 118 kgs and currently i am weighing around 88-89. Goal is to reach 70 to 75.
Will be waiting for your reply.